OFF THE BEATEN PATH: VIOLENCE, WOMEN AND ART Art Gallery of Calgary, Jan 11-Mar 9 This touring exhibition draws on artists from across the globe and employs a multitude of forms and media. Seeking to promote awareness of the root causes of violence against women, it also aspires to create empathy, foster dialogue and empower women and girls worldwide. Participating artists include Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, Maria Campos-Pons, Louise Bourgeois and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. The show is given special poignancy and timeliness in the wake of the recent gang rape that led to the death of a young woman in India.

DIANNE BOS Newzones, Calgary, Feb 9-Apr 4 Acclaimed as Canadas queen of pinhole photography, Dianne Bos has exhibited her work locally, nationally and internationally. Shooting architectural and landscape images during her wide travels, she typically employs long exposure times to capture the enduring essence of place. Her new, wonderfully atmospheric pinhole photographs play the iconic against the unexpected and the familiar against the mysterious.

ECOTOPIA/ECOTONE Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Feb 9-Apr 14 Ecotopia takes its title from a subgenre of science fiction that may present a vision of the world that is either ideal or nightmarish. Representing a range of media and artists as diverse as Rodney Graham, T&T and Tristram Lansdowne, Ecotopia challenges our assumptions about progress and our relationship with the natural world. Another group show, Ecotone, is the third stage of an ambitious environmental and agricultural sustainability project undertaken by the Field Notes Collective and the Alberta Rural Development Network.

COGNITIVE NATURE: PETER DEACON AND BARBARA AMOS Bugera Matheson Gallery, Edmonton, Feb 16-Mar 2 This show of abstracted landscapes brings together a range of materials and processes. Among Peter Deacons works are collages on paper, their imagery based on such irreducible elements as geographic location, personal experience, prime numbers, and primary colours. Barbara Amos, who has worked in paint, steel, video and photography, creates images which are inspired by the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide and which both fragment and coalesce through the meeting of traditional and digital media.